My hard drive is TOO FULL - what can I delete ?

My 60 gb. hardrive is now down to 9 gb. and I was wondering what I can safely delete off of here that I don't need. I know the obvious - photos, itunes music & podcasts, etc. But I'm wondering about aliases, etc. or anything else that just hangs around on our machines that we don't need.
Somebody suggested diff. languages since I only speak English so I took those all out of my applications. Now I see that I get a scrambled up window in Appleworks when I've saved a document as Claris 4.0 and it opens it in Appleworks but it still opens. I DON'T want to delete ANYTHING that's going to cause me problems down the line!! I've saved all the languages I've deleted. Any ideas what I may have taken out of appleworks that causes that problem????
Looking forward to hearing from someone !!

You've taken action at the right time, many leave it too late.
You can use Monolingual (link) to remove unwanted languages.
I wouldn't recommend deleting things manually unless you know exactly what that file is, although you can use WhatSize (link) to find large files. Items like alias are so small on disk it's a relatively pointless exercise to spend much time looking for them.
You should consider a larger external firewire hard drive to allow you to store more data. You'll also be able to create duplicates of your valuable data.
cheers
mrtotes

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IBook Hard drive 3/4 full, what can be deleted?

Hi,
My daughter is trying to figure out what she can delete from her Home Library to free up space on the HD of her iBook G4 (Mac OS 10.4.11). For example, does she need the Crash logs in her Library home folder(~Library/Logs/Crash Reporter)? What about the Icons and Caches folder in the Home folder? Does anything bad happen if you delete these?
I am kind of wondering, myself. Maybe if that stuff is unnecessary, I would delete it, also.
TIA!

Monolingual is a program for removing unnecessary language resources from Mac OS X,in order to reclaim several hundred megabytes of disk space. It requires at least Mac OS X 10.3.9 (Panther) and also works on Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger). It worked for me on 10.4
http://monolingual.sourceforge.net/
A detailed write-up on how to use Monolingual:
http://www.jklstudios.com/misc/monolingual.html
These pages have some hints on freeing up space:
http://thexlab.com/faqs/freeingspace.html
http://www.macmaps.com/diskfull.html
WhatSize is a simple tool that allows the user to quickly measure the size in bytes of a given folder and all subfolders and files within it. You would be surprised at to how many useless files might be laying around on your hard disks. The files and folders are automatically sorted by size, with the biggest sizes first. Note: WhatSize displays only files accessible by the current user. See:
http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/13006/
Yasu is a “Universal Binary” Macintosh utility that performs maintenance routines and clears the many cache files used by OS X. Yasu was designed to be a simple, first line of attack for a workstation that has started “acting up.” More often than not, a thorough purge of the cache files of a Mac will bring its behavior back into line.
http://jimmitchell.org/projects/yasu/
OnyX allows you to run misc tasks of system maintenance, to configure certain hidden parameters of the Finder, Dock, Safari, Dashboard, Expose, Disk Utility... to delete cache, to remove a certain number of files and folders that may become cumbersome, to see the detailed info of your configuration, to preview the different logs and CrashReporter reports, and more.
http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/20070
You can use the terminal find command enter below to display all files greater then 25meg.
Macintosh-HD -> Applications -> Utilities -> Terminal
sudo find -x / -size +51200 -exec ls -lh {} \;
I assume that you have logged on as an administrator. Enter your logon password.
The -x / combination says to search all files on the startup partition. The +51200 says to select all files greater than 51200 blocks of 512 length which is 25meg. The -exec indicates which comman to run on a selected file. The {} is the filename of the selected file.

My video playback out...every video shakes/flashes/doesn't play right. What's wrong? I thought the hard drive was too full, but I just deleted 125gigs, rebooted and it still flashes and doesn't play videos. This is true for youtube, ads, foxnews videos...

My video playback out...every video shakes/flashes/doesn't play right. What's wrong? I thought the hard drive was too full, but I just deleted 125gigs, rebooted and it still flashes and doesn't play videos. This is true for youtube, ads, foxnews videos...

Update: The iBook can play any 480p video and higher if I encode them with DivX and in AVI format. But of course this is not compatible with my iPhone 4. At least I can shrink my library now and get away from the full MPEG-2s. I don't get why I can't use Apple's h264 though. There has to be a setting I am missing. The sample Apple h264 videos from the days of Tiger worked flawlessly on my iBook when it was new so the CPU must be capable of decoding it. I really can't understand this.
Also, since I made my videos in English for my family, I had to create soft subtitles for my wife's Chinese family, and I can't get players like QT with perian or MPlayerX to sync them properly to an AVI encoded with DivX, they only sync well with the iPhone 4 m4v/mp4 formatted files I made. This is a real pickle.
So now I may need three or four copies of each video, LOL. I need to hardcode the subtitles if I want to use AVI to playback on older machines, and keep the mp4 file for the iDevices too, while keeping higher quality h264 videos for my American relatives...
If h264 is compatible with my iBook, what is the proper encoding settings? Must I dramatically lower the settings or frame rate? I can settle on 2 copies of each video that way. One iBook/G4/eMac compatible video that syncs correctly with my srt soft subs, and another version that works well with my iPhone 4 and iPad.
All in all, I will end up with more than 3 or 4 version of each video. On my late G5 dual core I have the full 720-1080p uncompressed master files. On my i5 iMac I have the h264 compressed versions for distribution, and lower versions for my iDevices. Now I need to keep either full MPEG-2 files for the iBook to play, or convert to older formats like DivX AVI for our family's legacy machines. I am running out of hard disk space quick now, LOL.
Is there an easier way?

If I wanted to connect an external hard drive to my iPad, what can I use? Do I have to use the Mac mini??

If i wanted to connect an external hard drive to my iPad, what can I use? Or would I have to purchase a Mac mini?

Sorry, I DO NOT RECOMMEND the camera connection kit for what you are asking!
I was trying to say that as I have the connection kit (bought for camera use so no loss for me)
I often WISH it could do more.
So sorry for the confusion.
The camera connection kit only allows you to send photos and video (that are correctly formatted I might add) to the photos app.
Other people have had success with it connecting to keyboards, but that us not so useful.

IMac hard drive getting too full

Hi,
I have a beautiful 2008 27" iMac, which has served me well for years. I still love it and would like to keep using it. It came with a 500 GB hard drive. I have recently purchased and connected a 2 TB "My Passport" external drive. I have been doing back-ups through Time Machine.
Unfortunately, my hard drive has 400 GB of family photos and movie clips, thanks to our awesome iPhones.
Is there a way that I can move all of these pictures and movies to my external drive, while taking them off of my desktop iMac?
I don't want to take the chance of losing my photos. I have a friend who bought extra space on the iCloud; however, she told me once she filled that space, the older pictures and movies started dropping off in a "first in, first out" manner, losing them permanently (which hurts a lot, who wants to lose those precious children's baby pictures).
My computer has a DVD writer built in, but it doesn't seem to recognize blank writable DVD's anymore. I'm assuming it is no longer working. I tried to access it using "Disk Utility" but my computer is not recognizing the "Superdrive" (it's grey'ed out and not selectable).
I just upgraded my iMac to Yosemite, and I have a maxed out RAM of 4 GB. I'm hoping by freeing up space on my computer, I will be able to put many more pictures to come as well as potentially speed it up.
Please help. Any suggestions?
NickG

Here are some general tips to keep your Mac's hard drive trim and slim as possible
You should never, EVER let a computer hard drive get completely full, EVER!
With Macs and OS X, you shouldn't let the hard drive get below 15 GBs or less of free data space.
If it does, it's time for some hard drive housecleaning.
Follow some of my tips for cleaning out, deleting and archiving data from your Mac's internal hard drive.
Have you emptied your Mac's Trash icon in the Dock?
If you use iPhoto or Aperture, both have its own trash that needs to be emptied, also.
If you store images in other locations other than iPhoto, then you will have to weed through these to determine what to archive and what to delete.
If you are an iMovie/ Final Cut user, both apps have their own individual Trash location that needs to be emptied, too!
If you use Apple Mail app, Apple Mail also has its own trash area that needs to be emptied, too!
Delete any old or no longer needed emails and/or archive to disc, flash drives or external hard drive, older emails you want to save.
Look through your other Mailboxes and other Mail categories to see If there is other mail you can archive and/or delete.
STAY AWAY FROM DELETING ANY FILES FROM OS X SYSTEM FOLDER!
Look through your Documents folder and delete any type of old useless type files like "Read Me" type files.
Again, archive to disc, flash drives, ext. hard drives or delete any old documents you no longer use or immediately need.
Look in your Applications folder, if you have applications you haven't used in a long time, if the app doesn't have a dedicated uninstaller, then you can simply drag it into the OS X Trash icon. IF the application has an uninstaller app, then use it to completely delete the app from your Mac.
To find other large files, download an app called Omni Disk Sweeper.
http://www.omnigroup.com/more
Also, Find Any File
http://apps.tempel.org/FindAnyFile/
Download an app called OnyX for your version of OS X.
http://www.titanium.free.fr/downloadonyx.php
When you install and launch it, let it do its initial automatic tests, then go to the cleaning and maintenance tabs and run the maintenance tabs that let OnyX clean out all web browser cache files, web browser histories, system cache files, delete old error log files.
Typically, iTunes and iPhoto libraries are the biggest users of HD space.
move these files/data off of your internal drive to the external hard drive and deleted off of the internal hard drive.
If you have any other large folders of personal data or projects, these should be archived or moved, also, to the optical discs, flash drives or external hard drive and then either archived to disc and/or deleted off your internal hard drive.
Moving iTunes library
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1449
Moving iPhoto library
http://support.apple.com/kb/PH2506
Moving iMovie projects folder
http://support.apple.com/kb/ph2289
Good Luck!

My iMac's hard drive is almost full - what are my options?

My beloved iMac is running out of space inside
It says my hard drive has 232.57 GB, and that there's only 18.07 GB remaining. Eeek!
What are my options making more space on my hard drive? I know my biggest problem is iTunes, especially videos. My music library is taking up 6 MB, and videos 78 MB. I'm not tech-savvy in the slightest.
Somebody help? Thanks!

Using the external drive for more storage works fine. You can use Apple's method for formally changing location of the +iTunes Music+ (which also contains your iTunes videos). However, I use a different way that I like better, because you are not changing the iTunes settings (and you can easily undo it).
If iTunes is running, quit.
If you are using default settings, the +iTunes Music+ folder should be located at
<user home folder>/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/
First copy this +iTunes Music+ folder to the external drive. Now, you have it in two locations. Change the name of the original folder from +iTunes Music+ to +iTunes Music old+ (or some other name). Make an alias (short cut) of the NEW +iTunes Music+ folder on the external drive. To do this (in case you are not familiar with using aliases) select the NEW +iTunes Music+ folder in a Finder window and
menu bar > File > Make Alias
or drag the folder while holding down Option-Command. You should see the curly arrow next to the icon indicating an alias will be created where you drop it.
Place the alias in the original location of the +iTunes Music+ folder (where you changed the name to +iTunes Music old+)
<user home folder>/Music/iTunes/
and name it exactly +iTunes Music+ (if you need to rename it). You are making the alias replace the original +iTunes Music+ folder, and have it point to your new +iTunes Music+ folder on the external drive.
When you run iTunes, it should be accessing your new +iTunes Music+ folder on the external, but you are able to keep iTunes using the default settings. To prove to yourself that the new +iTunes Music+ folder is being used, do something like rip a new CD or download a free song from the iTunes Store. Then check that the file ended up on the external drive. You can also do a +Get Info+ on any song or video (in iTunes) and verify that the file location is on the external drive.
(If something goes wrong, just get rid of the alias and rename +iTunes Music old+ back to +iTunes Music+.)
Once you are confident that all of your files are accessible and being accessed from the external drive, you can delete the old +iTunes Music+ folder on the internal drive.
Separate point...
You should also get another external drive that is at least as large as the filled space on your internal drive and your current external drive. Twice as large would actually be better. So if you have two 250GB drives that you plan to have at most 75% full, a 750GB external drive would be ideal. Then, you can use Time Machine to back up both your internal drive and external drive, to the new external drive. Getting an external drive with both FireWire and USB 2.0 would give you the most flexibility.

Got a new MBP and old external hard drive is too full for backup

I just got a new MBP and got all my data migrated and everything. I plugged my external hard drive in to run a backup, and it apparently is too full to run a backup of the new computer. Even though all the files are the same (mostly), I guess it's not going to overwrite anything because it's a new computer. Should I just get a new backup drive and start fresh for this computer. Should I reformat my old backup drive (and if so, how?)? Advice?

You should always have two backups of all vital data in any regard. A good 1TB Toshiba USB is $65
If there is NOTHING on the external HD you cant lose, format in disk utility > erase > format MAC OSX extended journaled.
then apply a Time Machine backup to the old HD of your new computer. That will free of a great deal of space.
However you should still have a 2nd backup of data. 2 backups is 1, and 1 is none.

My imac hard drive is almost full? Can i add an external drive that will serve as both the main and back-up drive?

my imac 500g internal drive is nearly full, so i plan to add an external desktop drive. i also need to use time machine for backups--can i simply buy one large drive to handle both needs, or do i need a dedicated drive for the time machine?
thanks!

I've racked my brain with this issue - done everything I know to do - and still I get this:
I've clearly moved everything to external drives except for 1GB of dropbox data that I keep across all my devices.
I've tried all of 'where did my disk space go' 's suggestions.
Terminal commands to disable local backup
What's interesting to me about this is that I do have 4.45 GB of Applications - is that “Other?”
I'm to the point where I'd like to wipe and start all over.. but that scares me! Suggestions?
iMac 10.7.5 (Lion)
4 GB Memory plus
2.8 GHz Intel COre 2 Duo

It keeps saying my hard drive is almost full even though I delete as much as possible and use an external hard drive, cant figure out where else I need to look?

I've tried to keep my computer as organized and clean as possible. I only have 400 songs and not a ton of pictures. I can't figure out where else I need to look on my hard drive. Any suggestions?

I can't really figure out how much I have left in memory but here is some basic info:
Model Name:          MacBook Pro
Model Identifier:          MacBookPro5,5
Processor Name:          Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed:          2.26 GHz
Number Of Processors:          1
Total Number Of Cores:          2
L2 Cache:          3 MB
Memory:          2 GB
Is there somewhere to look to see a breakdown of what memory is used where?
Thanks for your help!

External Hard Driver Not Showing Up - What Can I do?

One of my external hard drivers is not showing up in my Finder. It started to come and go a short while ago. It's backed up to another external HD via TimeMachine. It shows up in the Apple Profiler and I can hear it react when I unplug and plug it in via USB 2 or Firewire 800, but it isn't showing up in the Finder. Is there anything I can do about this? I have the new Leopard compatiable TechTools 4.6.1 ... and would love to run it through it ... if I could get it to show up.
Thanks!

I've tried powering on/off.
TechTools recognized it, the first time. Ran a test ... and it said it had a bunch of Bad Sectors.
I had to shut it down before I could have it run some other tests ... now it doesn't see it. I'll keep trying.

Start up disk is full, what can I delete?

I have a new MacBook Air, had a MacBook Pro and had all of my apps and saved files transfered to my Air. Now when I try to open ANY doc it says start up daisk if full and for mr to delete some items first. I just dont know what to delete, I have deleted all of my personal content like pics and such. Is there anything else I can delete to make more room? Please Help......thks

remove a few things to another external drive or flash drive - enough to load a couple of apps which are definate space-savers. I use an SD card since I've got a 13"...works great for storing stuff off of the mac where needed.
Find monolingual. This removes any/all of the built-in languages which come with the OS and applications. I ran it on mine (just had rebuilt it), saved over a Gig of space in just doing that alone. Once you've run it you can uninstall it to save even more space. It's free.
There's also another app called xslimmer. it goes through your apps (you tell it what to run against), and removes files which weren't meant for your specific system - again, saves a lot of space.
Cheers

Start up disk almost full - what can I delete?

I keep getting this error msg - startup disk is almost full delete files and I am sure there are useless files on here somewhere...
I have no idea what to delete - where to look for those useless files - help... anyone? Thanks mucho!

In addition to the XLab's advice (which is always very good advice) what I would recommend doing is moving your media (music, photographs and music) onto an external HD. Media tends to take the most space and offloading them from the internal HD is easy and a wise thing to to. Here some Apple Article about how to do so, I think you will agree it's a pretty easy solution.
iPhoto: How to move the Library to EHD
iTunes: library on EHD
Roger

Hard Drive fills up and I can't find what is filling it

I have twice in the last month received a warning that my hard drive was very full and I should move some files. I had abou 300 MB free. The first time it did this I cleared it until I had about 11 G free. I was careful to quickly move files after that.
When it happened last week, I didn't have much I could remove, so I cleared out Garageband and some other items and cleared 6G.
I decided to do a new install of Tiger and first backed up the files by moving them into a folder on my LaCie hard drive. When I moved everything from the hard drive, it amounted to only 10.5 G.
I re-installed using the archive system rather than a clean re-install. My reason for this is that I have one Classic Application (Adobe Pagemill) which I still use and I didn't want to lose the capacity to use Classic.
Today I did a disk repair -- a couple of trees needed fixing -- but the outcome was still that I had only 5.6 G free on a 38.5G drive. I can account for 10 so that would mean there are about 25 G of stuff that I can't account for or find to dump.
Can anyone help me?

Hi, Sheila —
Edit: Great news! SInce I'd already written this when I saw your 2nd post, I thought I'd post it anyway, as it includes a couple of other suggestions...
(1) You may find Dr. Smoke's Freeing space on your Mac OS X startup disk FAQ useful.
(2) What about "invisible" files? Many folks facing problems like you describe eventually discover just how much space is taken up by invisible files — not accessible by Finder — and that some of them may be unnecessary. For example, if you've ever used Norton Antivirus, it may have have created spacesuckingfile.xxxxxx — a huge (and hidden) file that you'd definitely want to "seek-and destroy." (This article tells how.)
The 3rd-party utilities WhatSize or OmniDiskSweeper can help you to identify "invisible" files that may be using a lot of disk capacity — but, if you don't know what something is/does, please don't delete it. Post back for help.
Anyway, my guess is that between (1) and (2), you'll be able to "clean house" pretty well...
(3) Btw, I'm confused why you'd think that an erase & install process would preclude your using Classic... would you please explain the basis for that idea?
HTH! and
Warm regards,
Dean
[1,886 ⊥ 3,285]

My brand new macbook pro shows shows that my had drive is filled with 481 gb of other!!! mac keeps showing me that my start up disk is full. what can other be???

mac keeps showing me that my start up disk is full. what can other be???

Where did my Disk Space go?
Slimming your hard drive
OmniDiskSweeper is a free utility that checks HD space.
FreeSpace cost $1 or is a free utility that checks HD space.
SpaceControl is a free utility that checks HD space.

Can I add a second hard drive and if so what cable etc would I need to do so?

Can I add a second hard drive and if so what cable etc would I need to do so?
This question was solved.
View Solution.

Hi,
For many 17" (or 17.3") machines such as Envy 17, dv, Pavilion 17 .... you can add a second HDD (my old loan dv7 has two HDD's and my current loan Envy 17 also has 2 HDD's). You would need the following kit:
http://www.newmodeus.com/shop/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=379
Regards.
BH
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My hard drive is TOO FULL - what can I delete ?

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